Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Bill

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

I have not heard that there is not going to be a referendum on legislation for the House of Lords; I have heard many people speculating that amendments may be moved. We shall see, and I shall see how I vote on the interesting suggestion made by the noble Lord.

It has been said that this debate has at times been something of a Second Reading debate on many of the amendments. That is because the Bill has been misrepresented in several of the debates in an exaggerated way. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, has made it clear again and again that we are not going to get a plethora of referendums, for several reasons. First, changes in competences and powers tend to come in packages, in treaties. Secondly, we have been assured many times that we will not have more great treaties. The fact that certain vetoes and certain competences remain after we have had Lisbon, Nice and Maastricht shows that there are very good reasons why national Governments wish to retain them. No Government are going to invest a huge amount of political capital in pursuing some relatively minor matter. That is not how these things operate; they tend to come in packages.

People talk about these issues being trivial. We are talking about competences and powers. We are talking about vetoes, for example. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to the amendment very well proposed last week by the noble Lord, Lord Davies—I think it was Amendment 22A—about exempting defence procurement from the requirements of the internal market. He said that that is something that could advantage the country, and surely we ought to have the flexibility to move to QMV. Actually, I think it is important to be able to buy certain types of defence equipment and certain weapons, or produce them where you want to, and not have them subject to the full rigour of the market. In the previous Government, Des Browne himself—now the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton—said that he regarded that as a vital power to be retained by the British Government. Judging by the previous Government and what the former Secretary of State said, that is an extremely important power for this country to retain.

The noble Lord said the Bill was otiose because the Government were not intending to hold referenda in this Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, the Bill will apply in this Parliament. It is not otiose any more than the Act giving effect to the Maastricht treaty. It had an opt-in for Britain to opt into the euro, but it was made very clear that we were not going to opt into the euro in the next Parliament. That did not make it otiose.

Then we have heard the argument that we are legislating for future Parliaments, but of course it is perfectly open to any future Government to repeal the Bill. With great respect to my noble friend Lord Jopling, we would be getting the worst of all worlds if we enacted the Bill but then said that the whole floodgates could be opened again without any specific intention at the beginning of each Parliament. I can think of nothing that would inflame public opinion more and get the tabloid press—about which we have heard a lot in this debate—going again than if, without any specific intention, a Government decided at the beginning of each Parliament to open the floodgates to the reversal of this legislation. We are told that it will lead to inflexibility in negotiations. However, other countries have procedures that take a long time and they have certain provisions on which they have to hold referenda. We have seen how it takes time for some of these treaties to be legislated for in other countries. Therefore, I do not think that the position of Britain’s negotiators would be any different from that of other countries.

What has been confusing in these debates is that this legislation is about competence and powers, whereas people try to make it about issues and policies. Nice, Lisbon and Maastricht have all given a tremendous amount of power and transferred sovereignty to the European Union. What in terms of power and competence do the Opposition and those opposed to the Bill think the European Union needs? What is the issue? What is the European Union not able to deal with at the moment? We have had many changes in recent years. The United States constitution has had only 27 amendments since coming into existence but we produce endless changes. The European Charter of Fundamental Rights was written in very dense language and was much longer than the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the charter of the United Nations.

The noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord Hannay, have certainly enlightened our debates with their enormous expertise and very abstruse knowledge of difficult and complex issues. However, when I listened to them I was reminded of what Winston Churchill said when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. He came out of the Treasury and said, “These chaps speak Persian. I prefer generals and admirals”. Of course, the contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, have been extremely important and enlightening in these debates, but I think that with some of these abstruse issues—the language used and so on—there is a real problem of connection between ordinary people and the European Union.

What has not been recognised enough by opponents of the Bill is the tremendous crisis that is taking place in Europe over the European Union. We have seen dramatic changes in public opinion on European integration in countries such as Finland. However, I would particularly single out what has happened in Holland. Throughout my life, Holland has been the most pro EU-integrationist country in Europe; now, it is the most obstructionist. It is strongly opposed to the bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and it wants to dismantle the Schengen provisions as well. The Bill draws a red line to say that in this Parliament, and beyond if this Government are re-elected, there will not be a transfer of powers. It seems to me to be sensible legislation and we should be determined to carry it forward. I think that the red lines we are drawing will go some way to restore some trust in the European Union.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, after so many Second Reading speeches at a Report stage, it may well be sunset before we reach a decision on this amendment. I have only one thing to say following the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Lamont. My experience in this place has been that your Lordships’ House has always been quite reluctant to call for sunset clauses—we do not do so lightly. They are a very important instrument and one has to treat them with great respect and care. The noble Lord, Lord Lamont, asked: if we have one on this Bill, why not have one on a number of other pieces of domestic legislation? I agree with him. I would not want to see a sunset clause on those pieces of legislation that he mentioned. However, there is a big difference between those and this piece of legislation.

This Bill has huge constitutional implications, but it is a step in the dark at the moment for us because we do not quite know what they will be. As it is of such huge constitutional importance, I feel that there should be the safeguard of a sunset clause because the next Government will be in an experimental stage of having to see how this legislation will be implemented. I do not think you can group this piece of legislation with other kinds of legislation and say that if you want a sunset clause on this, you should have it on the rest. This is a special case. It needs to have a sunset clause in order to be sure that when we step out into the darkness—it will be dark when the legislation first starts to have an impact—we can, if necessary, draw back from the brink.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Grenfell Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pearson of Rannoch]

My Lords, I have given notice that I again wish to propose that we do not continue with these proceedings at all. I hope for a more helpful answer today than the one I was given last Wednesday. I have been encouraged to try again by several noble Lords who have told me that the brush-off that I was given last week was really most unsatisfactory and not at all in accordance with the convention of your Lordships’ House that the Government at least try to answer questions; they should at least make a fair stab at it, even if they do not like the answer.

My question last week was simply whether it was it was sensible to break our traditions and spend so much time and energy debating the method by which Members are elected to Parliament when so much power has been passed to Brussels that they can do very little when they get there. My question today goes further, and I touched on it in the first Oral Question today: if we are to have a referendum on anything, why is it not to be on what the British people have been promised, which is whether or not we want to stay in the European Union? After all, such a referendum was given as a cast-iron guarantee by the Prime Minister during the run-up to the Lisbon treaty. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, and this sews up the coalition Government quite nicely, actually walked out of the House of Commons—some would say flounced—because he was not allowed a vote on whether we wanted to stay in or leave the EU. Such a referendum was also in his party’s manifesto.

Why are we wasting so much time on a referendum to which the public are supremely indifferent while denying them one that they have been promised and which 85 per cent of them say they want? Surely the Deputy Leader of the House must agree that this sort of procedure, together with the regrettable filibuster that is clearly being mounted by Labour Peers, can do nothing but harm to the reputation of your Lordships’ House. Can it do anything but make the British people despise their political class even more than they do at the moment? Here I entirely share the sentiments and the words of the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza.

I add my thanks and those of my party to all the staff in your Lordships’ House, who are behaving with such amazing fortitude and courtesy throughout these regrettable proceedings. I fear that we do not deserve such service if we continue.

[Lord Grenfell]

My Lords, I have not taken part in the debates on the many amendments that have been before us because, to be honest, I have not wanted to contribute to the length of the proceedings.

I have listened carefully to what the noble Baronesses, Lady D’Souza and Lady Williams of Crosby, have said. However, I have to reject the accusation of filibustering. The House must understand the frustration that is felt on this side of the House that a matter of such constitutional importance arrived in this House without a White Paper or a Green Paper, and that the issues in the second part of the Bill are of fundamental interest to the public because they concern the constituencies. I agree that at times we on my side of the House—I will get no accolades from the Front Bench for saying this—have gone too far in discussing the amendments and that maybe it would have been better if they had been discussed more briefly. However, they were and remain important amendments, because this is an incredibly difficult issue to deal with.

The real problem that faced us, as we all know and have discussed many times in this House, was the fact that there were two parts to this Bill when there should have been two Bills. What has happened to irritate the House, and maybe the public at large, has been due to the fact that the second part of the Bill would have been a much shorter exercise if it had been a second Bill. As my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench has said many times, we would have had no problem about meeting the date of 5 May if it had been debated and dealt with separately. However, a matter of such great constitutional importance as changing boundaries and all that that involves in reducing the number of Members of the House of Commons deserved a separate Bill.

All I say to Members of the House is: please understand the frustration of those on these Benches. It is not a question of trying to hold anything up but of trying to get proper scrutiny of a major constitutional issue. If only there had been two Bills instead of one, we might have avoided this unfortunate situation. I now agree that we should try to move forward as fast as possible, but I beg noble Lords to understand that where there are amendments that are absolutely essential to the second part of the Bill—to make sure that it is a good Bill in that second part—we retain the right to discuss it fully, as a scrutinising and revising Chamber should.